Not much could contain their mischief. And I was built for sin. Pleasure dome. Prison-castle. Dun-geon. Whatever the passing-throughs wanted, these gamblers and their girls and their ghosts. But they weren't just passing-throughs, these. Not like the others, and there were some, that wanted--bloods and spoils, these chances, and each other.

*

Once I was more, more wanted. Made of desert--Ne-va-da, or hell, sage and silver and snow; said out loud, these, as reasons for being, for names. I was a place and then another place, over bones, animal, human; and bloods, human and earth, glittering. So the mirrors say, and that's sky.

*

Demons have been here. Miners and traders and law; cuffs.

But they chased a gambler's ghost through my skins, Sammy Sammy Sammy whose jangling was a coin, charged; unluck. The other gripped, callus-to-frame, bowed; ripped-blind and shredded-up-shag--and made me, made me again. A bed.

I think this place knows us, he said.

Dean!

*

Canyons of slots.

They ended in one of my basements.

Sex dungeon, the Dean said, knocked my brick, do ya want to?

I was closed. But what I was built for: proposition. After-palace-before-condo: sin. Pawn. And the passing-throughs; this.

Sam!

Coin-and-iron through skin, spike and heel; railroad, hell, this past. They chased a gambler’s ghost, six and a killer, black and jack, through my skins, torn-down-and-after—

I don't know bodies as well--slot and tongue and arch; good bones. But they were painted, in the places they bound each other up. In hair.

Strip, said the Sammy-one, me.

Mirror: mouth to mark and wrist and unchained. Binding and unbinding is, I’ve heard,cage and prison and mark. Said out loud, these, as reasons for being,

for names.

*

Not much can contain, maybe mountains. Those around.

Buildings do not. Or vaults. My next-doors, though, with people and passing-throughs; I have eyes. A safe. For once it was soft out and demons weren't, you’d think, or angels or killers or gambler's ghosts. Just bloody bed and Washoe wind their car kicked up, but--